There’s plenty of video evidence to support the claim including one which emerged yesterday showing Russian soldiers rallying against their “lying commanders.”
“We are f**king assault troops, we are not territorial defense and they just tell us now!”
Oh sweet summer child, of course they wouldn’t tell you that on advance…
On one hand, I feel sorry for them. On the other, I remember all the morons I’ve talked to in the US complain endlessly about how the rich and business suits have too much… and then they adamantly believe Trump is their guy… A rich suit who has literally never done anything for anyone else that didn’t have a perceived benefit for him.
While they all deserve the chance to see the truth and decide not to throw their lives away for Putin… I don’t think I’d ever begin to accept most of them as peaceful neighbors until I heard each and every one of them explain why they’d never support anyone like Putin again, and explain what warning signs to look out for that they’ve learned from this.
The ones who cannot answer with peace and empathy deserve nothing but the gift Putin wanted to give them: The opportunity to push up sunflowers in Ukraine.
That’s the thing, how do you help people who are dead set against helping themselves? The only explanation I’ve been able to find out, both from personal experience and also written in texts that are many thousands of years old, is that you cannot.
The USA came within like an inch of becoming an outright ally of Russia, probably we would even have sent some weapons or something. Hell, that might still happen in as little as like a couple years. I’ve heard reports - with pictures, even videos - that in rural places widely scattered across the nation (south, midwest north, etc.) people are starting to see 3 flags put up in prominent places: one USA, one Confederate, and one Russian (might be Hungarian sometimes). That’s right, some people hear about what Putin is doing and approve, while others don’t believe that Ukraine is even being invaded at all.
Yeah, something similar someone told me (discussing MAGA heads): You can’t convince someone they’re in a cult if they’re in a cult. Only two things reliably change someone’s mind: time and death.
Fortunately there seems to be only ~11% of people on the extreme right side of the political divide, which is quite balanced against the ~11% on the extreme left end as well. That means then that there is ~88% of people somewhere in the middle… but bc of how our voting system works (it’s electoral college, all the way down), they hardly matter.
Which is precisely the situation that occured in Nazi Germany as well, and their conquered nations, where the number of die-hards was quite small, but the enormous number of “collaborators” carried the day. As is happening now in Russia too.
The only thing required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing (also in the Bible, Proverbs 24:11-12), but Russia definitely takes the situation to new heights when “doing nothing” means picking up a gun and shooting civilians in some nation other than your own (the normal phrases describing that sound more like “invasion” than “merely defending” yourself). I mean, at some point you move beyond mere “collaborator” into “active participant”… and it probably happened way before the physical picking up the gun, as in voting for Putin in the first place, even after he made his intentions quite clear with Crimea so long ago. Putin is not in charge so much as the entire country of Russia is backing him to do precisely what he has been doing?
Holly? Really? More than 1/5 (22%) of your country’s population is considered extremist?
I did not mean do nothing; voting is key. I just meant there is no gain in fighting or focusing on these; either time will make them change, or they die with their conviction.
I get what you are saying, but that’s exactly the reason we call it an autocracy (dictatorship) and not a democracy. There are many factors at play that make it nearly impossible for the population to have that kind of power. I understand that you can say they have a choice, but the choice then is between living a life or eventually dooming yourself and your family; the choice is not that hard for most, you don’t even think about the bigger picture while making this choice. Sure, long term it will not get better, but the future has a weird place in these types of countries.
And the people who see through this and/or have the means will leave the country. Most of the time, it’s the young and educated that leave, which leads to brain drain, resulting in even lower chances of real change happening because the people that stay are most likely not the ones starting a revolution.
Your beliefs are warranted and fair, but unfortunately, I think thats not the reality of the situation when we zoom in.
You can say the same thing about almost anything. I mean, if you take climate change, we all know it’s going to be real bad for all of us and even worse for the generations that come after us. We even know what the main reasons for it are (fossil energy and reckless human activity). We’ve known this since at least the 1980s; the models predicted by scientists in the 80s are only a little off from our reality. And what did we do in all those years? We made it worse, much worse. But we all knew it was wrong. Depending on which scientist you ask, we are either at the start of the next big extinction event, or we are already in the middle of it.
I like your quote from the Bible, but I think there is a point of no return where even the best actions of the best people can do nothing to prevent the inevitable.
More than 1/5 (22%) of your country’s population is considered extremist?
That’s not quite what I said - I said they lie at the extreme ends of the spectrum. If there was a graph of people who like vanilla, chocolate, or a swirly mixture of both, the two “extreme” ends could be the pure vanilla on the one end and the pure chocolate on the other - i.e., “extreme” does not (always) imply a magnitude, only direction; whereas the word “extremist” does imply a very high magnitude.
That said however, many people in the USA do indicate that they would be okay to see violent overthrow and upheaval of the entire system of government. I do not know precisely how many, nor is there likely to be an accurate count b/c few may be willing to admit it in an official poll, unless it were anonymous and then people would abuse it (e.g. the same person could vote many times to inflate their particular viewpoint). It makes sense to me b/c:
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities
- Voltaire
At some point, it becomes a moral imperative to act, and violent overthrow becomes the correct action, IF the facts in question were accurate, e.g. to prevent an even greater harm to innocents.
But mostly my point was that the matters involved are quite complex - including some outright Sophie’s choice material. If someone handed you a gun and told you to shoot a random stranger with it, and meanwhile they had people pointing guns at both your wife & child and said that they would kill both if you did not pull the trigger, would you do it? The trolly problem through and through: do you act against your conscience to murder someone you do not know, in order to potentially save some people that you are very close to? I say potentially b/c in the calm of this theoretical discussion we both can realize that it might be unlikely that any of your loved ones and/or you would be allowed to remain alive - why leave witnesses that could potentially come back to harm you in some way? So really you are likely dead no matter what you do… and yet, can you take that chance!? There may be a slim possibility of hope that this is some kind of “power demonstration” where they decide to let you live as an example to others that they can do as they please, and your story would strengthen their position by generating fear. On the other hand, they could just be having fun the whole time, your gun isn’t even loaded, and when you pull the trigger they’ll just laugh… and then kill your whole family anyway, and then you too.
This is EXTREMELY sick stuff to contemplate, and yet… Russia shows no sign of leaving the Ukraine anytime soon, i.e. they offer the latter populace no chance to avoid thinking along these lines, nor Russian troops either who are just as caught up in this as are the innocent victims of Russia’s neighboring country, EXCEPT that the troops on the front-lines are not entirely as innocent as are the infants & children being raped & slaughtered in Ukraine. Some might even go so far as to argue that by remaining in Russia, propping up its economy and such - e.g. making the food that soldiers will eat, clothing that soldiers will wear etc. - that normal Russian civilians are all but actively participating in the slaughter of innocent Ukrainian ones? That is undoubtedly true, and yet does that mean that counter-attacks upon Russian civilian infrastructure should be allowed? The Bible does say that justice should be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth… so wouldn’t raping Russian 5-year-olds and razing entire cities to ashes be tit-for-tat? Or are there better ways of resolving conflicts, like at the very least Russia ceasing to actively conquer Ukraine, as well as beginning to make reparations to restore what was lost? But since that is not going to happen, what then will… or even should happen?
Anyway, how it relates to the USA (where I am from) is that one day very soon, we may have our second Civil War and face these issues inside of our own borders. In fact, that war has already started, though it is currently in its cold phase and has not yet erupted into a continuously blazing “hot” phase, except for the tragic (but blessedly brief) events on January 6, where one police officer was brutally crushed and others injured by the angry mob who were invited to storm the capital, after first being told to “prepare to fight like hell”. The likelihood of the affairs in Ukraine and those in the USA being entirely unrelated seem about as likely as a prominent Russian official falling down a flight of stairs, and then shooting themselves in the back of the head, twice. And thus, they do not seem likely to merely go away with time, for at least as long as Putin remains alive, and likely much longer beyond that.
Yeah, I know what you meant, and you are right; extremist is the wrong word (English is not my main language, sorry). Still, almost 25% of the country is considered extreme by your own definition of the norm, which seems high, but of course, it depends on how these statistics were made and what questions were asked.
Oh no, don’t misunderstand me; I am totally on your side, although not as well-read or versed as you are. I just want to say there is an increasing discrepancy between what we think the information and general situation, for example, the people in rural Russia where most people live, is like versus what it actually is. Change will come; it is inevitable, but it takes time and may cost many lives. You expect too much of the average folks who are not really connected or concerned about the “outside” world and rather are living in their own world, which may not adhere to your way of thinking.
Thank you for your explainations!
I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this as a non-American, but how the heck did you end up in that situation? How do a large portion of you still vote and support the people who are actively dismantling the foundation of your country? (I’m not talking about the Biden admin; they are generally very well-received where I live, especially after Trump.) Yeah, I’m sure Russia and most likely other countries interfere with American politics, and/or some of your politicians are paid for by these outside actors, and it works like a charm. If I were Putin, I would try to interfere as much as I can and sow as much distrust and misinformation within the USA as possible
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“For refusing to deploy on pointless assaults or for other offenses, some officers would strip them naked in winter cold and hold them in cold pits, beating them and threatening them with execution.”
How does Russia even have defense lines with these kind of tactics?
If I was forced conscripted from my home, force to die in a snow white field, and then beaten/shot at if I chose life.
I’d be fully honest.
I’d just buy my time until I could shoot the torturer in the forehead. If I am going to die while not being recognized as a human being, I would just act like a human being when the chance came.
Yeah I’m constantly confused by the idea that they could conscript 500k people who don’t wanna be there, give them training and weapons, and they DON’T just take their officers out on day 1.
But I don’t pretend to know any of the gritty facts of the situation either.
The threat of death and/or gulag for their family will do a lot
It happened it ‘nam.
Let’s hope some Russians have a backbone and it’s just not getting reported.
There’s been a few reports regarding how much Russia is struggling to actually get people to show up when their name is pulled.
That’s not growing a backbone.
I want to see them fraggin officers or shooting up a military base.
I mean I’d love to see it too, but it’s easy to understand why they don’t. They’d be signing their family’s death warrant.
If you’re prepared to kill others families to save your own instead of the people threatening your family, well I hope the war comes to their families soon.
Im going to be honest, unless you’ve been in the situation, I don’t give a single fuck about what you think you should do. It’s a helluva lot easier to say you’d do it than it is to actually do it. It’s fucked. Everything about it is fucked.
Don’t forget the brainwashing - all it takes is one fuckwit to give away the whole plan, so even if YOU are not, so long as THEY are you’re screwed. And also the very real terror of what they will do to your family - even by dying you protect them, but by living via mutiny (probably followed by defection) it puts them at grave (if not certain?) risk.
Plus do not underestimate the power of going along with the crowd, even if you know it is wrong - that pressure to conform is HUGE. Studies do things like ask people what 4+3 is, with the answer delivered as a raising of hands and a whole classroom of plants (people being in on the study, knowing they are intentionally giving the wrong answer) and people will give an answer like “6” (rather than the true of one 7), presuming that they somehow missed something somewhere (rather than assume that EVERYONE who gave the incorrect answer is an absolute idiot), and just not wanting to stand out. In fact, this effect is apparently so powerful that I cannot be certain that even you or I, having been forewarned by knowing about these studies, still would not fall prey to it in some form or another where we may not as immediately recognize it in some new context.
Russia has
centuriesmillennia of practice at what it is doing now.You are a free man of a free country, and they are brainwashed slaves of the quasi-empire.
Fastest way to demoralize Russian troops: give the surrendering soldiers a warm place to stay, 3 square meals, a job, and immigration rights for the whole family.
When basic needs are met, people don’t want to fight.
